Battletoads

I went in expecting a brawler and got a variety show with a brawler hiding somewhere inside it. That is the honest summary of Battletoads 2020, and whether that framing sounds exciting or exhausting tells you most of what you need to know about whether this is for you. Dlala Studios, backed by Rare, built a side-scrolling beat-'em-up that constantly interrupts itself with shoot-'em-up stages, hoverbike obstacle courses, platformer puzzle sections, and at least one level that is essentially a prolonged quick-time event about mundane jobs. The combat engine underneath all of that, when the game actually lets you use it, is genuinely solid. Light jabs, launching hits, heavy guard-breakers, morph attacks that pull out absurd props, tongue strikes, bubble-gum throws. Each toad plays differently too: Pimple is the slow bruiser, Zitz is the speed-combo option, Rash sits in the middle. There is real depth there if the game would stay out of its own way. The problem is pacing. The opening acts front-load the brawling, and the back half of the campaign starts swapping out entire levels for twin-stick shooter stages, reaction-based minigames, and pure platforming puzzles with no combat at all. By the time you reach the endgame you can go stretches where you almost forget the core genre. Critics landed in two camps: those who appreciated the genre-hopping ambition and those who found it a structural mess. Metacritic put the PC version at 66 and the Xbox One version at 72, which is pretty much the widest split you can get from the same game on two platforms, and it reflects exactly that disagreement. The honest answer is that both camps are right, just weighing different things. Couch co-op for three players is the high point and the game's clearest argument for itself. Drop-in, drop-out works cleanly, revival mechanics are forgiving enough to keep less experienced players in the fight, and the cartoon humor lands better when you have someone else in the room reacting to it. The writing is divisive solo but turns into a decent shared joke with company. The animation itself is genuinely impressive, the kind of fluid hand-drawn work that makes every punch and morph feel punchy on screen. If you have two people willing to sit on a couch with controllers, this game upgrades from a mixed bag to a pretty good time. Online co-op is absent entirely, which in 2020 felt like a real miss and still stings now. Runtime is roughly four to five hours on a normal playthrough, and collectibles plus grade rankings give completionists a reason to replay individual levels, though there is no ranked mode or competitive layer to keep pulling you back. Difficulty settings are available and the game is not the knuckle-shredding original, which will frustrate legacy fans but makes it accessible for newcomers. The Turbo Tunnel is back with a behind-the-bike camera that, frankly, drains some of the original's adrenaline, and the bullet-hell shooter stages are the levels that will test your patience most sharply. Neither section is broken, just uneven. Bottom line: bring two friends and a controller each and you will have a good evening. Going in solo expecting a focused brawler in the vein of Streets of Rage 4 or River City Girls, you will probably finish it feeling like you watched a great pilot episode that never committed to a genre. The art direction alone is worth something. The beat-'em-up core is worth something. Four to five hours of that on a couch with friends is worth something. Whether that something adds up to your something is the real question.

Fred · Scout Team

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